The following description of the background of the invention is provided simply as an aid in understanding the invention and is not admitted to describe or constitute prior art to the invention.
Insurance underwriting involves evaluating risk exposure of potential clients to determine the premium to be charged to insure that risk. As part of the underwriting process for life or health insurance, medical underwriting, a process which considers indicators of present or future medical condition, may be used to examine the applicant's health status and estimate the applicant's mortality risk.
Laboratory tests have long been recognized as having implications on the mortality risk of the individual tested, and in fact, medical underwriters have long utilized laboratory tests in estimating a mortality risk for an individual. Generally, these assessments are based on individual assays, or at most, restricted groups of closely related assays (such as the group of total cholesterol and high density lipoprotein (HDL), or the group of aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and gamma-glutamyl transferase (GGT)).